IA quick read in five points
When Vietnamese people hear the word Orthodox, they often picture something strict and closed, or assume it is a small branch that split off from Catholicism. Both pictures miss the mark. The word comes from the Greek Ὀρθοδοξία, read as Orthodoxia, formed from orthos, meaning straight or right, and doxa, which means both belief and glory, so believers understand it as right belief and right glorification. In Russian it is Православие, Pravoslavie, meaning right glorification.
Orthodox Christianity is the Christianity of the eastern half of the old Roman world. It spoke Greek, then spread to the Slavic peoples, the Romanians and the Georgians. It has no single head holding jurisdiction over the whole body. It is a family of some fourteen autocephalous churches sharing one faith, one liturgy and seven ecumenical councils. Step into an Orthodox church, and the first things you see are a screen of icons closing off the sanctuary, candlelight, the scent of incense, and in many places a congregation that stands throughout the service.
First. Orthodox Christianity is one of the three major bodies of Christianity. It professes one God in three Persons and believes that Jesus Christ is the Son of God made man, and according to Pew Research Center in 2017 this body numbers nearly 260 million people when the Oriental Orthodox churches are counted with it. Second. It sees itself as the unbroken continuation of the Church of the apostles, does not accept that it was founded in 1054, and regards the seven ecumenical councils from 325 to 787 as the foundation of its doctrine. Third. The core of its teaching is deification, meaning that human beings are called to share in the life of God, and that path runs through the liturgy, the mysteries and prayer. Fourth. It has a liturgical art of its own, the icon, and most of its churches still calculate Easter by the Julian calendar. Fifth. In Vietnam it is present through a few small parishes of the Russian-speaking community, the first of them founded in Vũng Tàu in 2002, and it is not on the list of religions recognised by the State.
This is the library's third page on Christianity. The Catholicism page tells the shared history of the first ten centuries and the body in communion with Rome, the Protestantism page tells the story of the Reformation of 1517, and this page follows the eastern body from Constantinople onward, returning to the shared history only where needed for the account to read smoothly.
The page is arranged in fifteen sections. The library's approach is to report, not to adjudicate. What the Orthodox churches teach is written in one voice, and what historians can verify in another, set side by side so you can compare them yourself. The separation of 1054 is recorded as an event, together with how each side sees it. Icons are introduced through their role in the liturgy rather than by describing the appearance of holy figures, in keeping with the library's rule against depicting people. The page stops at ecclesiology and does not go into the questions of jurisdiction still under discussion between the churches today.
IIThe eastern half of the Roman world
Christianity began in Jerusalem but grew up in Greek. The New Testament was written in the common Greek of the eastern Mediterranean, and the letters of Saint Paul went to Corinth, Thessalonica, Ephesus and Philippi, all of them Greek-speaking cities. Throughout the first three centuries, most Christian communities lived in the eastern half of the Roman Empire. As the Orthodox themselves put it, their faith did not come out of anywhere. It stayed where it was born.
The see of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, acknowledged by all sides as first in honour during the first millennium. Where the two sides later came to differ was how far that honour carried jurisdiction with it.
Inaugurated as the new capital in 330 and called the New Rome. The council of 381 ranked this see second after Rome, and canon 28 of the Council of Chalcedon in 451 restated and extended that ranking.
A see founded by Saint Mark according to tradition, and a great centre of theology in the fourth and fifth centuries.
Where the disciples were first called Christians, according to the Acts of the Apostles. The Orthodox see is now based in Damascus.
Where, according to the Gospels, Jesus died and rose again. Raised to the rank of patriarchate by the Council of Chalcedon in 451, ranking fifth.
Historians call these five sees the pentarchy, pentarchia. Throughout the first millennium, all five were in communion with one another as one Church. But within that communion, the eastern and western halves grew along two different lines. The West spoke Latin, the East spoke Greek, and by the sixth century few people on one side could still read the books of the other. The West gradually came to use unleavened bread in the Mass and to require priests to be celibate, while the East kept leavened bread and allowed married men to be ordained priests. None of these was enough to break communion, but added up over many centuries they produced two Christian worlds that no longer knew each other's faces.
One more difference ran deeper than all the rest: the question of how the Church is governed. The East was used to the image of bishops sitting together in council to decide in common, and regarded the primacy of Rome as a primacy of honour among equal sees. The West increasingly stressed the authority of the bishop of Rome over the whole Church as the successor of Saint Peter. The separation of 1054 would break out around these two questions, one about the word Filioque in the Creed and one about the authority of Rome, as told in the fourth section.
IIIA timeline of two thousand years
The timeline below records religious milestones. The years of the first millennium are the shared history of Christianity, accepted alike by the Orthodox, Catholics and most Protestants. Political events are mentioned only where the religious milestone that follows cannot be understood without them.
- About 30 to 33Pentecost in JerusalemAccording to chapter 2 of the Acts of the Apostles, the Holy Spirit descended upon the apostles. Orthodox teaching regards this as the day the Church was born.
- 325The First Ecumenical Council at NicaeaDefined the Son as of one substance with the Father and drafted the first part of the Creed.
- 381The Second Ecumenical Council at ConstantinopleCompleted the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed that the Orthodox recite to this day, without the word Filioque.
- 451The Council of ChalcedonDefined Christ as one person in two natures. The Coptic, Syriac, Armenian and Ethiopian churches did not accept this council, and from here the family of Oriental Orthodox churches took shape.
- 726 to 843Two waves of iconoclasmThe first ran from about 726 to 787, the second from 815 to 843. The Seventh Ecumenical Council at Nicaea in 787 affirmed that the veneration of icons is legitimate.
- 843The Triumph of OrthodoxyThe veneration of icons was definitively restored. The day is still celebrated on the first Sunday of Great Lent.
- 863Cyril and Methodius go to MoraviaThe two brothers from Thessalonica created the Glagolitic alphabet and translated the liturgical books into Slavonic, opening the way for the Orthodox Christianity of the Slavic peoples.
- 988The baptism of Kievan RusAccording to the Rus chronicle, Grand Prince Vladimir was baptised and led his people into eastern Christianity.
- 1054Mutual excommunications between Rome and ConstantinopleThe customary date for the East-West schism, told in detail in the fourth section.
- 1439The Council of FlorenceThe two sides signed a document of union, but it was not received by the eastern clergy and faithful and in the end came to nothing.
- 1453The end of the Byzantine EmpireThe Patriarchate of Constantinople continued to exist, and is based today in the Phanar district of Istanbul.
- 7 December 1965The excommunications of 1054 liftedPope Paul VI in Rome and Patriarch Athenagoras in Constantinople declared on the same day that the excommunications of 1054 were lifted.
- 2002The first Orthodox parish in VietnamOn 17 July 2002, the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church authorised the opening of a parish in Vũng Tàu, now part of Hồ Chí Minh City.
- June 2016The Holy and Great Council on CreteA pan-Orthodox gathering prepared for more than half a century, attended by ten autocephalous churches, with four churches absent.
IVThe year 1054 and two views of one parting
The events are fairly well recorded. In the spring of 1054, Pope Leo IX sent a delegation led by Cardinal Humbert of Silva Candida to Constantinople to discuss the points of disagreement with Patriarch Michael Cerularius. The meeting failed. On 16 July 1054, during the liturgy, the delegation entered the church of Hagia Sophia and laid on the altar a bull excommunicating the patriarch. On 20 July, a synod of twenty-one archbishops and bishops presided over by Michael excommunicated the legates, and made this public on 24 July.
There is one detail every historian mentions: Pope Leo IX had already died on 19 April 1054, almost three months before the bull was laid on the altar, so the authority of the delegation at that moment is still debated. And both excommunications were aimed at specific individuals, not at an entire Church.
The two main points of disagreement
Filioque is a Latin word meaning "and from the Son". The Creed of 381 says the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father. The West gradually added the word Filioque, beginning in Spain in the sixth century, and according to the historical sources usually cited, in 1014 the Creed containing that word was sung at Mass in Rome for the first time. The East objected both to the theological content and to one side altering on its own the creed of an ecumenical council.
The East accepts Rome as first in honour, and many Orthodox theologians today also accept a role of service to unity, but not direct jurisdiction over every church. The West regards that authority as belonging to the office of the successor of Saint Peter.
Leavened or unleavened bread, the rule of priestly celibacy, the way of fasting. Later both sides came to regard these as differences of custom that could coexist.
Most historians today do not regard 1054 as the day Christianity split in two, but as one milestone in a long process. Before it there had already been breaks in communion, the most significant being the dispute around Patriarch Photius in the 860s. After 1054, the faithful of the two sides still mixed in many places, and contemporaries did not immediately see it as a permanent division.
Two attempts at reunion also show how deep the rift had become. The Council of Lyon in 1274 and the Council of Florence in 1439 both issued documents of union signed by eastern representatives, but both times the documents were not received by the clergy and faithful back home. That is why, when asked in which year East and West parted, many historians answer that there was no single year, but a whole span from the ninth century to the fifteenth.
How the Orthodox side sees the parting
In the account familiar from Orthodox catechisms, the Orthodox Church did not separate from anyone. It kept the Creed of the ecumenical councils unchanged, kept the conciliar governance of the first millennium unchanged, and regards the addition of the Filioque and the extension of Rome's authority as changes introduced unilaterally by the West. For that reason the Orthodox rarely use the word schism about themselves, and do not regard 1054 as the year their religion was founded.
How the Catholic side sees the parting
In the account of the Catholic Church, communion with the bishop of Rome, the successor of Saint Peter, is an essential sign of unity, so the parting was the eastern churches leaving that full communion. At the same time, the Decree on Ecumenism of the Second Vatican Council in 1964 recognises that the Orthodox churches have true sacraments and a hierarchy in apostolic succession. The library's Catholicism page tells more of this side.
The two sides met in one document. On 7 December 1965, Pope Paul VI in Rome and Patriarch Athenagoras in Constantinople issued a joint declaration expressing regret for the words and deeds of 1054 and removing the excommunications of that year from the memory of the Church. The declaration did not restore communion. The two sides still do not celebrate the Eucharist together, and the differences over the Filioque and the authority of Rome are now discussed in a joint commission for theological dialogue.
People often say Orthodox Christianity was born in 1054. To say so is to see through the eyes of one side. Both Churches regard themselves as the continuation of the Church of the apostles, and both share the ten centuries of history before that, the same saints and the same first seven councils. The year 1054 is when the two sees excommunicated each other, not the year a new religion was founded.
VThe seven ecumenical councils
If one thing had to be chosen as the backbone of Orthodox doctrine, it would be the seven ecumenical councils. A council is a meeting of bishops, and an ecumenical council is one whose decisions are received by the whole Church. The Orthodox often call their Church the Church of the seven councils. The Catholic Church counts twenty-one ecumenical councils, of which the first seven coincide with the Orthodox list, while the later fourteen took place in the West after the two sides had parted, so the Orthodox do not accept them as ecumenical.
| Council | Year | Place | What was defined |
|---|---|---|---|
| First | 325 | Nicaea, Asia Minor | The Son is of one substance with the Father, in Greek ὁμοούσιος, homoousios. The first part of the Creed was drafted. |
| Second | 381 | Constantinople | The Holy Spirit is God, worshipped together with the Father and the Son. The Creed was completed. |
| Third | 431 | Ephesus | Mary is the Mother of God, in Greek Θεοτόκος, Theotokos. |
| Fourth | 451 | Chalcedon | Christ is one person in two natures, divine and human, without confusion and without separation. |
| Fifth | 553 | Constantinople | Further clarified the teaching of Chalcedon and condemned certain texts regarded as leaning towards dividing Christ in two. |
| Sixth | 680 to 681 | Constantinople | Christ has two wills, a divine will and a human will, in harmony with each other. |
| Seventh | 787 | Nicaea | The veneration of icons is legitimate, as distinct from the worship due to God alone. |
The Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed is recited or sung in every Orthodox Divine Liturgy exactly as in the text of 381. It opens with the words "I believe in one God, the Father Almighty", and in its passage on the Holy Spirit says that he proceeds from the Father, adding not a single word. For the Orthodox, keeping this text unchanged means keeping unchanged the faith of the apostles that the ecumenical councils put into words.
There is one more subtle point about how councils are received. In Orthodox teaching, a council does not become ecumenical merely because it was convened with enough solemnity or bears the signatures of the great sees. It becomes ecumenical when the whole Church receives it over time, including the hierarchy, the monastics and the laity. That is why the Council of Florence in 1439 had all the signatures and still came to nothing. This understanding is called conciliarity, which the Russians call sobornost.
VICore teachings
Most of what the Orthodox believe, Catholics believe too: one God in three Persons, Christ as God made man who died and rose again, the sacraments, the life to come. This section does not repeat that shared ground. It goes into what gives Orthodoxy its own voice: how it understands tradition, the purpose of human life, its way of prayer and how it speaks of God. Much of what follows is not different dogma, but different emphasis on the same foundation.
Holy Tradition, one continuous living stream
Protestants say Scripture alone, Catholics say Scripture and Tradition. The Orthodox often say Holy Tradition includes Scripture. As they understand it, Holy Tradition is not a store of texts placed alongside the Bible but the continuous life of the Church under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, in which Scripture is the core, followed by the Creed and the decisions of the seven ecumenical councils, the writings of the Church Fathers, the liturgy, icons and the lives of the saints.
In practice, Orthodox doctrine is rarely set out in new definitions. When a question arises, the answer is usually sought in what the Fathers said and in the words of the liturgical hymns, because, as an often quoted saying has it, the rule of prayer is the rule of faith. People believe what they pray, and to learn what the Church believes, listen to what the Church sings.
The Trinity, beginning from the Father
When speaking of the Holy Trinity, eastern theology usually starts from the Father as the source of the Son and the Holy Spirit: the Son is begotten of the Father, the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father. That is why the Filioque is not a mere matter of wording to them. Orthodox theologians argue that saying the Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son blurs the role of the Father as the one source. The Catholic side answers that the word only expresses what the Latin Fathers taught, and does not intend to posit two sources. Many theologians on both sides now hold that part of the disagreement comes from differences between Greek and Latin.
Deification, the purpose of human life
Saint Athanasius of Alexandria wrote in On the Incarnation of the Word, chapter 54, a line Orthodox theology has repeated for seventeen centuries: God became man so that man might be deified. According to the tradition, human beings are created in the image of God and called to become like God. The goal of a Christian life does not stop at being forgiven, but is union with God, sharing in his life through grace.
The Greek word is θέωσις, theosis. Hearing the word deification, a newcomer may easily take it to mean that a person becomes a god or dissolves into God. Orthodox teaching says clearly that this is not so. The human being remains a creature, God remains God, and the union takes place without confusion. The usual image is an iron bar in a furnace: the iron glows red, bright and hot like the fire, yet it is still iron.
Essence and energies
If human beings are united with God, can they then know God as he is in himself? The Orthodox answer was set out by Saint Gregory Palamas, who lived from 1296 to 1359, and confirmed by councils in Constantinople in the mid-fourteenth century. He distinguished the essence of God, in Greek οὐσία, ousia, which no creature can ever reach, from the energies of God, ἐνέργειαι, energeiai, the way God reveals himself and acts in the world. Human beings never grasp the essence, but truly share in the energies, and those energies are God himself, not some intermediary.
This distinction goes hand in hand with apophatic theology: speaking of God by saying what he is not, since every human concept is smaller than he is.
Hesychasm and the Jesus Prayer
Palamas wrote to defend a way of prayer long practised by monks, called hesychasm, from the Greek ἡσυχία, hesychia, meaning stillness. Those who follow it repeat a short prayer over and over, called the Jesus Prayer, often in rhythm with the breath, hoping to bring the prayer down from the lips into the heart until it prays without ceasing. The common Greek form is Κύριε Ἰησοῦ Χριστέ, Υἱὲ τοῦ Θεοῦ, ἐλέησόν με, meaning "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me", and some versions add the words "a sinner" at the end.
Many people compare this prayer with the recitation of sacred names in Buddhism or with meditation. The Orthodox usually point to a difference: this is a call to a personal God asking for mercy, not an attempt to empty the mind, and those who practise it are advised to do so under a spiritual guide. A knotted woollen prayer rope, called komboskini in Greek, is used to count the prayers.
Original sin in the eastern idiom
Both sides teach that the sin of the first parents damaged the human condition. The difference lies in the wording. Many Orthodox theologians prefer to speak of ancestral sin rather than original sin, and stress that human beings inherit the death and weakness that the sin brought about rather than inheriting the guilt itself. This way of speaking has its roots in the Greek Fathers and differs from the account following Saint Augustine that was highly influential in the West. A visible consequence is that the Orthodox have no separate dogma on Mary being preserved from original sin, even though they venerate her as all-pure and most holy.
The Mother of God
Mary holds a very large place in Orthodox life. Her most common title is Theotokos, Mother of God, following the decision of the Council of Ephesus in 431, and almost every hymn in the liturgy has a passage addressed to her. The feast of the Dormition of the Mother of God on 15 August is one of the twelve great feasts, preceded by two weeks of fasting. According to the tradition, the veneration of Mary always points to Christ, since the title Mother of God is first of all a statement about Christ: the son she bore is true God.
Death and prayer for the departed
Orthodox Christianity prays for the departed very often, with memorial services on the third, ninth and fortieth days after death and on the anniversary, as well as several Saturdays in the year set aside for the dead. At these services a dish of boiled wheat called koliva is offered, recalling the image of a seed sown in the ground to sprout. The Orthodox, however, have no dogma of purgatory as Catholicism defines it. They teach that the souls of the dead are in a state of waiting for the Last Judgement, and that the prayers of the Church benefit them, while exactly how is held to belong to mystery.
VIIIcons, the art of the liturgy
Icon, from the Greek εἰκών, eikon, literally means image. In Orthodox Christianity an icon is not a decorative picture, nor a work through which the painter expresses personal style. It is a sacred object with a place in the liturgy: it is blessed, censed, kissed, carried in procession, and set in its proper position in the church according to a meaningful order. The Orthodox often call the icon a window, because as they understand it, the viewer does not stop at the wooden panel but looks through it towards the one the image points to.
The Orthodox argument rests on the Incarnation. Saint John of Damascus, writing three treatises in defence of icons around 730, argued that the invisible God cannot be depicted, but once the Word had become man and been seen with human eyes, making an image of him is a way of professing that he truly became man. The Seventh Ecumenical Council in 787 took up a saying of Saint Basil the Great: the honour given to the image passes to its prototype. People kiss an icon not to worship wood and paint, but to venerate the person the image represents.
The council of 787 drew a clear distinction between two words. λατρεία, latreia, is worship, due to God alone. προσκύνησις, proskynesis, is veneration, bowing and kissing, given to icons, the cross, the Gospel book and the saints. That distinction is the whole of the Orthodox answer to the question of whether they worship pictures.
The conflict came in two waves, from about 726 to 787 and from 815 to 843. During those waves, making and venerating icons was banned in many parts of the Byzantine Empire, and many icons were destroyed. Historians still debate the causes, from the theological argument over whether Christ may be depicted to the influence of neighbouring communities that did not use images in worship, and generally agree that no single cause explains it fully. One recorded consequence is that very few icons from before the eighth century survive, and most of the oldest that remain are kept at the Monastery of Saint Catherine on Mount Sinai.
The iconostasis
In an Orthodox church, the sanctuary with the altar is separated from the nave by a screen covered with icons, called the iconostasis. The screen has three doors. The central one is the Royal Doors, through which only the priest and deacon pass at set moments of the liturgy. The two side doors are for the deacon and the altar servers. The icons are arranged in a prescribed order: to the right of the central doors is always the icon of Christ, to the left always the icon of the Mother of God, and next to these the icon of the saint or event the church is named after. In Slavic lands the screen can rise several tiers high, each tier with its own theme.
Newcomers often think the screen is there to hide the altar. The explanation within the tradition is the opposite: the screen connects rather than divides, setting the whole history of salvation before the eyes of the faithful.
The conventions of icon makers
Greek uses the same verb for writing and painting, so the Orthodox customarily speak of writing an icon. By tradition, the icon writer prepares with fasting and prayer, follows closely the models accepted by the Church rather than composing freely, and usually does not sign the work. The wood is coated with fine gesso, the paints are mixed with egg yolk, and the background is often gilded. Each icon must bear the name of the person or event it shows, because it is the name that makes the panel an icon of that person.
The formal conventions have their own reasoning too. Icons do not use the linear perspective of Renaissance painting but often what is called reverse perspective, the gold background is explained as light that comes from no created source, and the composition avoids suggesting a scene from everyday life. All of this is meant to say that this is not a portrait but the image of a transfigured reality. The Orthodox tradition, especially in Slavic lands, makes almost no use of free-standing statues in churches, only flat images or low relief.
Outsiders who see believers kissing images, lighting candles and bowing before them may easily think this is worship of pictures. Orthodox teaching distinguishes worship, due to God alone, from veneration given to images, and regards all veneration before an icon as directed to the person the image represents. An icon that is worn out or damaged is by custom not thrown away but burned or buried with dignity, as one treats a sacred object.
VIIIScripture, the Church Fathers and the liturgical books
The Orthodox Bible has a New Testament of twenty-seven books, exactly as in Catholicism and Protestantism. The difference lies in the Old Testament. The East reads the Old Testament according to the Septuagint, the version of the Seventy, Septuaginta, the Greek translation made in Alexandria in the centuries before the Common Era and the version the New Testament writers themselves often quote. It contains some books and passages not found in the Hebrew canon, and the Orthodox keep a few more books than even the Catholics. One notable point: no Orthodox ecumenical council has definitively closed the Old Testament canon, so the number of books printed in the Bibles of the Greek, Russian, Romanian or Georgian churches varies slightly.
| Part | Orthodox | Catholic | Protestant |
|---|---|---|---|
| New Testament | 27 books | 27 books | 27 books |
| Old Testament, shared part | 39 books by the Protestant count | 39 books | 39 books |
| Books Catholics call deuterocanonical | Yes, including Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, 1 and 2 Maccabees, and the additions to Esther and Daniel | Yes, the same list | Not counted as canonical |
| Books found only in the eastern tradition | Usually 1 Esdras, 3 Maccabees, the Prayer of Manasseh and Psalm 151, with 4 Maccabees printed in an appendix in the Greek Bible | Not counted as canonical | Not counted as canonical |
| Canon fixed by | No ecumenical council has fixed it. Local synods such as Jerusalem in 1672 have listed it | The Council of Trent in 1546 | The confessions of faith of the 16th and 17th centuries |
The Church Fathers
If Scripture is the core of Holy Tradition, then the writings of the Church Fathers, the bishops and monks of the early centuries, are how the Church has read Scripture. The Orthodox do not close the age of the Fathers at any particular century, so some of those honoured as Fathers lived as late as the fourteenth century.
| Church Father | Dates | Why he is often cited |
|---|---|---|
| Athanasius of Alexandria | About 296 to 373 | Defended the teaching of Nicaea, author of On the Incarnation of the Word. |
| Basil the Great | About 330 to 379 | Wrote the monastic rule for the East and laid the basis of the Divine Liturgy that bears his name. |
| Gregory of Nazianzus | About 329 to 390 | Called the Theologian in the East for his sermons on the Trinity. |
| John Chrysostom | About 347 to 407 | The greatest preacher of the East, whose name is attached to the Divine Liturgy used every Sunday. |
| John of Damascus | About 675 to 749 | Author of three treatises in defence of icons and of a summary of the orthodox faith. |
| Gregory Palamas | 1296 to 1359 | Defended the way of prayer in stillness and the distinction between essence and energies. |
The liturgical books and the Philokalia
The Orthodox learn their faith through the liturgy more than through catechisms. The liturgy is set down in a whole library of service books, books of hours and hymnals, and most of the doctrine an ordinary believer knows has been heard sung from those books. Alongside them stands the Philokalia, meaning love of the beautiful, an anthology of texts by monks from the fourth to the fifteenth century on prayer and hesychasm, first printed in Venice in 1782.
IXThe Divine Liturgy and the mysteries
The main Orthodox service is called the Divine Liturgy, in Greek Θεία Λειτουργία, Theia Leitourgia, corresponding to the Catholic Mass. As the Orthodox describe it, the liturgy is where heaven and earth meet, and the Rus chronicle relates that the envoys of Grand Prince Vladimir, after attending the liturgy at Hagia Sophia, said they did not know whether they were in heaven or on earth.
Three liturgies
On Sundays and most feast days, the Divine Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom is used. Ten times a year, namely the five Sundays of Lent, Holy Thursday and Holy Saturday, the eves of Christmas and Theophany, and the feast of Saint Basil on 1 January, the Divine Liturgy of Saint Basil the Great is used, which is longer and has a different prayer of consecration. On weekdays of Great Lent, since it is a season of repentance, the full liturgy is not celebrated, and in its place comes the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts, with communion from bread consecrated on the previous Sunday. The liturgical language is Greek, Church Slavonic or the local vernacular, since the East early on favoured translating the liturgy into the language of each people.
A Divine Liturgy consists of the preparation of the gifts, celebrated beforehand by the priest, then the Liturgy of the Word with the procession of the Gospel book called the Little Entrance, and then the offering, with the procession of the gifts called the Great Entrance, accompanied by the singing of the Cherubic Hymn. The phrase Κύριε ἐλέησον, Kyrie eleison, Lord have mercy, is sung again and again throughout. Most of the service is sung, usually without musical instruments.
The seven mysteries
What Catholics call sacraments, the East calls mysteries, from the Greek μυστήριον, mysterion. Counting exactly seven mysteries became customary in the East from around the thirteenth century, and many Orthodox theologians today point out that the number seven is a way of arranging them rather than a limit, since the whole life of the Church is sacramental in character.
| Mystery | How it is celebrated in Orthodoxy | Difference from Latin Catholic practice |
|---|---|---|
| Baptism | Full immersion in water three times in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, including for newborns. | The Latin side mostly pours water over the head. |
| Chrismation | Anointing with holy myron immediately after baptism. | The Latin side usually waits until the teenage years, with the bishop presiding. |
| The Eucharist | Leavened bread and wine, which the faithful receive together from a small spoon. Children receive communion from the time of their baptism. | The Latin side uses unleavened bread and usually gives first communion at around seven or eight years of age. |
| Repentance | The penitent stands before the icon of Christ, while the priest stands alongside as a witness and then reads the prayer of absolution. | No confessional booth with a partition is used. |
| Holy Orders | Three degrees: bishop, priest, deacon. A man married before ordination to the diaconate may become a priest, while bishops are chosen from among the monastics. | The Latin side requires priests to be celibate, with some particular exceptions. |
| Marriage | The heart of the rite is the crowning of the bride and groom, after which the couple drink from a common cup and walk around the table three times. | The Church may permit a second and third marriage under the principle of economy, with a rite of a penitential character. |
| Anointing of the sick | For those who are ill in body or spirit, not only the dying. In many places the whole congregation is anointed on Holy Wednesday. | Before the Second Vatican Council the Latin side customarily reserved it for the dying. |
Fasting
Outsiders are often surprised by the Orthodox fasting calendar. Under the traditional rules there are four fasting seasons a year: Great Lent, forty days plus Holy Week before Easter, the Apostles' Fast after Pentecost, the Dormition Fast from 1 to 14 August, and the Nativity Fast from 15 November to 24 December. On top of these come most Wednesdays and Fridays of the year. Fasting in the strict sense means abstaining from meat, dairy, eggs and fish, and on some days from oil and wine as well. In practice the level of observance varies widely, and priests often grant dispensations to the sick, the elderly and young children.
Monastic life and Mount Athos
Orthodoxy is not divided into many religious orders as Catholicism is. There is only one monastic life, following the rule of Saint Basil and the customs of each monastery. The largest monastic centre is Mount Athos, on a peninsula in northern Greece, which the Orthodox call the Holy Mountain. It has twenty major monasteries along with many smaller monastic houses and hermitages, and was inscribed by UNESCO on the World Heritage List in 1988. By a custom centuries old, women are not permitted on the peninsula.
XThe Julian calendar and Easter
This is where outsiders most easily see the difference between the Orthodox on one side and Catholics and Protestants on the other. The Julian calendar was used in the Roman Empire from 45 BC. Each of its years is about eleven minutes longer than the true solar year, so it drifts by one day roughly every one hundred and twenty-eight years. In 1582 Pope Gregory XIII promulgated the Gregorian calendar to correct that drift, and gradually the whole world adopted it as the civil calendar. The Orthodox churches did not follow a reform initiated by Rome, and many of them still reckon the liturgical year by the Julian calendar today. From 1900 to 2100, the Julian calendar runs thirteen days behind the Gregorian.
In 1923 a pan-Orthodox conference in Constantinople proposed the Revised Julian calendar, which matches the Gregorian calendar until the year 2800. The churches of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Greece, Cyprus, Romania, Bulgaria and Albania later adopted it for the fixed feasts. The churches of Jerusalem, Russia, Serbia and Georgia, and the monasteries of Mount Athos, kept the old Julian calendar. So for the same feast of Christmas on 25 December, the Greeks celebrate on the same day as the West, while Russians and Serbs celebrate on 7 January in the civil calendar, because 25 December in the Julian calendar falls on exactly that day.
Easter, the feast of feasts
For the Orthodox, Easter, in Greek Πάσχα, Pascha, stands above every other feast. It is not on the list of the twelve great feasts but rises above that list altogether. The vigil begins in darkness, then a flame is lit from the altar and passed gradually to each candle in the hands of the faithful. The whole congregation processes around the church, and on returning to the doors, the priest proclaims Χριστὸς ἀνέστη, Christos anesti, Christ is risen, and the congregation replies Ἀληθῶς ἀνέστη, Alithos anesti, He is truly risen. Russians say Христос воскресе and reply Воистину воскресе. This greeting takes the place of everyday greetings for forty days after the feast.
Both the Orthodox and the West keep the principle that the Council of Nicaea in 325 is usually regarded as having laid down: Easter is the Sunday after the first full moon following the spring equinox. The difference is that most Orthodox churches, including those that use the Revised Julian calendar for fixed feasts, still reckon the equinox and the full moon by the Julian calendar and the ancient tables. As a result, the two Easters coincide in some years, are one week apart in others, and as much as five weeks apart in others still. The Orthodox Church of Finland is the exception, celebrating Easter by the Gregorian calendar.
| Year | Western Easter | Orthodox Easter | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 20 April | 20 April | Same day |
| 2026 | 5 April | 12 April | One week |
| 2027 | 28 March | 2 May | Five weeks |
| 2028 | 16 April | 16 April | Same day |
| 2029 | 1 April | 8 April | One week |
| 2030 | 21 April | 28 April | One week |
| 2031 | 13 April | 13 April | Same day |
The liturgical year and the twelve great feasts
The Orthodox liturgical year begins on 1 September. The twelve great feasts comprise eight feasts of Christ and four of the Mother of God: the Nativity of the Mother of God on 8 September, the Exaltation of the Cross on 14 September, the Entry of the Mother of God into the Temple on 21 November, the Nativity of Christ on 25 December, Theophany on 6 January celebrating the baptism of Christ, the Presentation of Christ in the Temple on 2 February, the Annunciation on 25 March, the Entry into Jerusalem on the Sunday before Easter, the Ascension, Pentecost, the Transfiguration on 6 August, and the Dormition of the Mother of God on 15 August. For churches on the old Julian calendar, add thirteen days to find the civil date.
XIAutocephalous churches, with no single head
Orthodox Christianity is not one church with a single governing centre, but a communion of autocephalous churches. The Greek word is αὐτοκέφαλος, autokephalos, literally self-headed. An autocephalous church elects its own head, governs itself through its own synod of bishops, and is bound to the other churches only by communion in the same faith and at the same altar. Below the autocephalous level there are also autonomous churches, which run their internal affairs but whose head is confirmed by the mother church, such as the Church of Finland under Constantinople or the Church of Mount Sinai under Jerusalem.
The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople is acknowledged by the Orthodox churches as first in honour, according to the familiar Latin formula primus inter pares, first among equals. He has the right to convene pan-Orthodox gatherings and is regarded as the coordinator of unity, but he has no jurisdiction over the other autocephalous churches. In Orthodox teaching, supreme authority in the Church belongs to the council of bishops, not to any one individual.
| Order | Church | Seat | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople | Istanbul | One of the five ancient sees, first in honour since 1054. |
| 2 | The Patriarchate of Alexandria | Alexandria | An ancient see, caring for Orthodox communities across Africa. |
| 3 | The Patriarchate of Antioch | Damascus | An ancient see, its faithful mostly Arabic-speaking. |
| 4 | The Patriarchate of Jerusalem | Jerusalem | An ancient see, custodian of many holy places connected with the life of Jesus. |
| 5 | The Church of Russia | Moscow | Autocephalous in practice from 1448, a patriarchate from 1589. The largest number of faithful. |
| 6 | The Church of Serbia | Belgrade | Autocephalous since 1219, under Saint Sava. |
| 7 | The Church of Romania | Bucharest | Autocephalous in 1885, a patriarchate from 1925. |
| 8 | The Church of Bulgaria | Sofia | A patriarchate from the tenth century, its autocephalous organisation re-established in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. |
| 9 | The Church of Georgia | Tbilisi | Georgian tradition dates its autocephaly to the fifth century. |
| 10 | The Church of Cyprus | Nicosia | Its autocephaly was recognised by the Council of Ephesus in 431. |
| 11 | The Church of Greece | Athens | Declared autocephaly in 1833, recognised by Constantinople in 1850. |
| 12 | The Church of Poland | Warsaw | Granted autocephaly by Constantinople in 1924. |
| 13 | The Church of Albania | Tirana | Its autocephaly recognised by Constantinople in 1937. |
| 14 | The Church of the Czech Lands and Slovakia | Prešov | Granted autocephaly in the twentieth century, recognised by Moscow and Constantinople at two different times. |
The second family: the Oriental Orthodox churches
There is another group of churches that also carry the word Orthodox in their names but do not belong to the communion described above. These are the Coptic Church of Egypt, the Ethiopian Tewahedo, the Eritrean Tewahedo, the Syriac, the Armenian Apostolic and the Malankara Church of southern India, usually referred to together as the Oriental Orthodox churches. They did not accept the Council of Chalcedon in 451 and accept only the first three ecumenical councils. They reject the label monophysite that others once applied to them, and describe their teaching on Christ as one united nature of the incarnate Word. In the late twentieth century, theological dialogue between the two families produced joint statements, but full communion has not been restored. This page is about the first family, and the second is mentioned because it substantially changes the count of adherents.
XIINumbers of adherents, and why one must ask who is counted
With Orthodoxy, the question of how many must come with the question of who is counted. Two major research bodies give two figures more than thirty million apart, and both combine the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox families. Taking the first family on its own, the figure is considerably smaller.
Four things that skew the count
Pew Research Center estimates that the Oriental churches account for about one fifth of all Orthodox Christians, with the Ethiopian Tewahedo Church alone numbering about 36 million people. Depending on whether a table combines or separates them, the figure jumps accordingly.
In many countries of Central and Eastern Europe, most of the population identify as Orthodox as a cultural identity, while according to Pew surveys only a small share attend church weekly. Counting those who identify and counting those who practise give two very different figures.
Each autocephalous church counts in its own way, some counting the baptised, some relying on the national census of the country concerned. No single body adds up the figures for the whole communion.
Many Orthodox communities live in countries whose censuses do not ask about religion, or consist of workers and students staying short term, as is the case in Vietnam, so nobody counts them.
| Scope and source | Figure | Data year | Classification |
|---|---|---|---|
| Worldwide, Pew Research Center | Nearly 260 million people, about 12 percent of Christians and 4 percent of the world population | report published on 8 November 2017 | Combines the Eastern and Oriental families. |
| Worldwide, Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell | 291,580,000 people | mid-2025 | The Orthodox bloc as classified by the World Christian Database, including the Oriental churches. |
| Historical share, Pew | About 20 percent of Christians and 7 percent of the world population | 1910 | Pew compares this with today's shares of 12 and 4 percent. |
| Country with the most faithful, Pew | More than 100 million in Russia | 2017 report | People who identify as Orthodox. |
| Ethiopian Tewahedo Church, Pew | About 36 million, nearly 14 percent of all Orthodox Christians | 2017 report | Part of the Oriental family. |
| Distribution by continent, Pew | 77 percent live in Europe, compared with 91 percent a century earlier | 2017 report | Combines both families. |
A few conclusions follow. First, the figure the library gives is a range, from about 260 to 292 million, and that is the figure for both families together. Second, according to Pew, the number of Orthodox Christians has grown in absolute terms over the past century but fallen as a share, because population in the traditionally Orthodox regions has grown more slowly than in other Christian regions in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and Asia.
XIIIOrthodox Christianity in Vietnam
Orthodox Christianity is present in Vietnam on a very small scale, made up almost entirely of Russian-speaking communities living and working here, together with a small number of Vietnamese believers. This section records only the parishes, places of worship and legal status, as far as public sources allow.
The Vũng Tàu parish, the first
According to the website of the Russian Orthodox diocese responsible for the Philippines and Vietnam, on 17 July 2002 the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church decided to open a parish in Vũng Tàu, now part of Hồ Chí Minh City following the administrative reorganisation of 1 July 2025, and in that same year the first Divine Liturgy and the first Easter were celebrated there. The parish is dedicated to the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God, and according to the diocese's website it serves some one thousand Russian speakers working for the Vietsovpetro oil and gas joint venture, together with their families. That figure is the size of the community the parish serves, not a count of adherents.
On 27 February 2024, according to a news report from the Department for External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate, a church set within a building, known in Russian as a house church, was consecrated in Vũng Tàu in the name of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God, with an interior painted with icons. The parish holds services on Sundays and feast days.
Other parishes
| Place | Parish name | Milestones | Where services are held |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vũng Tàu, now part of Hồ Chí Minh City | Kazan Icon of the Mother of God | Decision to open on 17 July 2002, church consecrated on 27 February 2024 | The parish's house church |
| Hà Nội | Saint Xenia of Petersburg | First Divine Liturgy in 2009, formally taken under pastoral care in 2019 | According to the diocese's website, once a month, in a borrowed Catholic chapel. One source records services once held at the Russian Centre for Science and Culture |
| Hồ Chí Minh City | Protection of the Mother of God | Formally taken under pastoral care in 2019 | According to the diocese's website, every two or three weeks, at a facility of the Russian community |
| Nha Trang, Khánh Hòa province | Saint Nicholas | Founded in 2024 | Public sources do not yet state a regular place of worship |
Legal status
The list of 16 religions recognised by the State that VietNamNet cites from data of the Ban Tôn giáo Chính phủ, the Government Committee for Religious Affairs, does not include Orthodox Christianity. The library has also found no public document granting legal status to any Orthodox organisation in Vietnam, and no figure for adherents published by a Vietnamese authority. The library therefore gives no figure for adherents, and will add one if an official document can be found.
The library does not yet have a page for any Orthodox place of worship, in Vietnam or abroad.
XIVThrough the eyes of feng shui
This section needs a caveat first. Orthodox Christianity does not teach feng shui. Not a single line in the Bible, in the decisions of the seven councils or in the rules of any Orthodox church deals with choosing orientations by birth year, reading the energy of the land or arranging objects. The library places this section here because this is the library of a practitioner of destiny analysis, and readers familiar with Vietnamese tradition need a point of comparison. This is the library's own reading through the eyes of traditional Vietnamese feng shui, not a teaching of the religion.
Orthodox Christianity has its own rule for orienting buildings, and that rule is stricter even than Catholicism's. An Orthodox church is traditionally built so that the altar stands at the east and the main door opens to the west, so that the whole congregation faces the rising sun together in prayer. The reason given in the tradition is that the east is the direction of light and of the risen Christ, and the direction from which, in one reading of chapter 24 of the Gospel of Matthew, the Lord will return. In the baptismal rite, the candidate turns to the west to renounce evil, then turns to the east to profess the faith. At home, many Orthodox families set aside an eastern corner as an icon corner, with icons and a small oil lamp kept burning.
Floor plan and dome
The most familiar floor plan of an Orthodox church is the cross-in-square, with a large dome at the centre. As explained within the tradition, the church is an image of the sanctified cosmos: the dome is the sky, the floor is the earth, and the liturgy is where the two are joined. In Slavic lands the domes are often onion-shaped. The origin of this shape is still debated, from the theory of a snowy climate to the theory of a flame symbol, and no theory has won general acceptance.
A reading through traditional Vietnamese eyes
If an Orthodox church is placed within the frame of traditional feng shui, and the library repeats that this is its own interpretation, a practitioner would notice the following points. Sitting and facing. For a geomancer, the facing direction of a building is the side its front looks out on. By that reckoning, an Orthodox church, with its main door opening to the west, sits east and faces west, its back resting on the Chấn (Zhen) direction, which belongs to Wood and is where the sun rises. What is interesting is that the focal point of the building, the altar, lies exactly on that Chấn side, and everyone inside faces it. The bright hall. In front of many Orthodox churches is a wide forecourt for the procession around the church on Easter night, what the traditional approach calls the minh đường, or bright hall, but that forecourt exists because of the procession rite. Light. The light in an Orthodox church is usually soft and concentrated, coming from the windows around the base of the dome and from candlelight, unlike the even, open light of a Protestant church. The traditional approach values gathered energy in a place of worship, so this is where the two views meet, though from entirely different reasoning.
The icon corner and the ancestral altar
What is perhaps closest to Vietnamese experience is the icon corner. Like the ancestral altar, it is the most honoured place in the home, with a lamp kept alight, incense and prayers morning and evening, and it is the place a visitor entering the house must first show respect to. But the differences are clear too: the icon corner is directed towards God and the saints, while an Orthodox family's remembrance of its dead takes place mainly through memorial services at church, through the dish of koliva and on the memorial days the Church has set. Vietnamese people usually choose the direction of the altar according to the birth year of the head of the household, while the Orthodox choose it by the direction of the rising sun, the same for every home. The library's Ancestor veneration page helps set the two practices side by side.
If you are Orthodox, this page does not advise you to consult feng shui, and the right authority to ask about arranging an icon corner or building a church is the priest of your own parish. If you are not religious and step into an Orthodox church to find it darker than a Catholic church, with an icon screen hiding the altar and people standing throughout the service, that is not a shortcoming of the building but the intention of a liturgical tradition more than a thousand years old.
XVCommon misunderstandings
This final section gathers the questions the library hears most often. Most of them come from the same root: Vietnamese people know Christianity mainly through Catholicism and Protestantism, and so tend to apply the pattern of those two bodies to one built in a different way.
Both Churches regard themselves as the continuation of the Church of the apostles and share the first ten centuries. The year 1054 is when the sees of Rome and Constantinople excommunicated each other, and historians see the parting as a process lasting several centuries. In size, it is the third largest body of Christianity, with about 260 to 292 million people when both families are counted, according to Pew in 2017 and Gordon-Conwell in 2025.
Orthodoxy comprises some fourteen autocephalous churches, including the ancient sees of Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem with many Arabic-speaking faithful, as well as the churches of Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria and Georgia and communities on every continent. The name Greek Orthodox is an old term referring to the original liturgical language, and does not mean Greeks only.
No. He is first in honour, the first among equals, but has no jurisdiction over the other autocephalous churches. In Orthodox teaching, the highest authority belongs to the council of bishops.
No. Every church celebrates Christmas on 25 December. Churches that keep the old Julian calendar count 25 December by that calendar, and from 1900 to 2100 this day falls on 7 January of the Gregorian civil calendar. Greeks use the Revised Julian calendar and so celebrate on the same day as the West.
A man who married before ordination to the diaconate may be ordained a priest and go on living with his family. Once ordained, he may no longer marry. Bishops, however, are chosen from among celibate monastics, under a rule dating from the seventh century.
The cross with three crossbars, which is also the emblem the library chose for this page, is most common in the Slavic churches. In the traditional explanation, the top bar is the board bearing the charge, the middle bar is where the arms were stretched out, and the slanted lower bar is the footrest, its raised end pointing towards the good thief. The Greek churches usually use a simple two-bar cross, and both forms are Orthodox.
Not backwards, but in a different order. The Orthodox join the first three fingers to symbolise the Trinity and fold the other two to symbolise the two natures of Christ, then touch the forehead, the chest, the right shoulder first and then the left. Latin Catholics touch the left shoulder first.
?Quick Questions
How does Orthodox Christianity differ from Catholicism?
Both believe in one God in three Persons, both accept the first seven ecumenical councils, both have sacraments and a hierarchy in apostolic succession, and they shared ten centuries of history before the mutual excommunications of 1054. There are four main differences: the Orthodox do not accept the Filioque added to the Creed, do not accept the Pope's jurisdiction over every church, allow married men to be ordained priests, and mostly calculate Easter by the Julian calendar. In addition, the Orthodox use leavened bread, give communion to newborns and make the icon the centre of their liturgical art.
Does Orthodox Christianity have a pope?
No. Orthodoxy is a communion of some fourteen autocephalous churches, each electing its own head, usually titled patriarch, archbishop or metropolitan. The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople is acknowledged as first in honour, the first among equals, with the right to convene common gatherings, but has no jurisdiction over the other churches. In Orthodox teaching, the highest authority belongs to the council of bishops.
Why does Orthodox Christianity celebrate Christmas on 7 January?
Not every Orthodox church celebrates on 7 January. The churches of Jerusalem, Russia, Serbia and Georgia and the monasteries of Mount Athos keep the old Julian calendar, so 25 December by that calendar falls on 7 January in the civil calendar, since from 1900 to 2100 the two calendars are thirteen days apart. The churches of Constantinople, Greece, Romania, Bulgaria and several others have adopted the Revised Julian calendar proposed in 1923, and so celebrate Christmas on 25 December like the West.
When is Orthodox Easter in 2027?
By the rule of the Orthodox churches, Easter in 2027 falls on 2 May, while Catholic and Protestant Easter falls on 28 March, five weeks apart. In 2026 Orthodox Easter was on 12 April, and in 2028 the two coincide on 16 April. The difference comes from the Orthodox side still reckoning the equinox and the full moon by the Julian calendar and the ancient tables.
Are there Orthodox churches in Vietnam?
Yes, on a very small scale. According to the website of the Russian Orthodox diocese responsible for the Philippines and Vietnam, the parish of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God in Vũng Tàu, now part of Hồ Chí Minh City, was opened in 2002 for the Russian-speaking community, and its church was consecrated on 27 February 2024. There are also small parishes in Hà Nội, Hồ Chí Minh City and Nha Trang. Orthodox Christianity is not on the list of 16 religions recognised by the State.
Do Orthodox Christians worship icons?
According to their teaching, they venerate rather than worship them. The Seventh Ecumenical Council, held at Nicaea in 787, distinguished worship, in Greek latreia, due to God alone, from veneration, proskynesis, given to icons, the cross and the saints. When kissing an icon or lighting a candle before it, the Orthodox understand that they are venerating the person the image represents, not the wood and paint. The underlying reasoning is the Incarnation: because God became man, images of him can be made.
How many Orthodox Christians are there?
Pew Research Center, in its report published on 8 November 2017, gives nearly 260 million people, about 12 percent of Christians and 4 percent of the world population. The Status of Global Christianity 2025 table from Gordon-Conwell gives 291,580,000 people as of mid-2025. Both figures include Oriental Orthodox churches such as the Coptic, Ethiopian and Armenian. The country with the most faithful is Russia, with more than 100 million people according to Pew.